Govt to com­plete Iran-Pak­istan Gas Pipeline soon: Mif­tah

Chair­man Board of In­vest­ment (BoI) and Min­is­ter of State Dr Mif­tah Is­mail on Fri­day said that Pak­istan was keen to com­plete IranPak­istan Gas Pipeline (IP) and in this re­gard, the gov­ern­ment was en­gaged in ne­go­ti­a­tion with a Chi­nese com­pany for build­ing of a 200kilo­me­ter Nawab­shah to Gwadar gas pipeline. He was talk­ing to me­dia af­ter at­tend­ing Pak­istan-Iran Busi­ness Fo­rum here at a lo­cal ho­tel. He said that the project of the gas pipeline from Nawab­sah to Gwadar was likely to be com­pleted within two years while the re­main­ing 70 kilo­me­ter part of gas pipeline from Gwadar to the Ira­nian bor­der would be com­pleted within few months in the sec­ond phase.

The BOI Chair­man said that af­ter the com­ple­tion of the IP Gas Pipeline, 250 mil­lion cu­bic feet gas would be im­ported from Iran dur­ing first year, while in the sec­ond year the im­port of gas would be en­hanced to 500 mil­lion cu­bic feet while int the third year 750 mil­lion cu­bic feet gas would be im­ported.

Re­ply­ing to a ques­tion, Mif­tah Is­mail said that cur­rently Iran and Pak­istan had no for­mal trade but af­ter the visit of the Ira­nian Pres­i­dent, Has­san Rouhani along with high pro­file busi­ness del­e­ga­tion, the bi­lat­eral trade was likely to be ini­ti­ated for­mally. He said Pak­istan would ex­port tex­tile, phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal prod­ucts, value added agri­cul­tural and dairy prod­ucts while Iran was in­ter­ested to send petro­chem­i­cal prod­ucts, gas, steel and pa­per prod­ucts.

More­over, Min­is­ter of State and Chair­man Board of In­vest­ment (BoI) Dr. Mif­tah Is­mail on Fri­day called upon the Ira­nian busi­ness­men for tak­ing ben­e­fit from the lib­eral trade and friendly in­vest­ment op­por­tu­ni­ties ex­ist­ing in all sec­tors of na­tional econ­omy. Ad­dress­ing `Pak-Iran In­vest­ment Regime and Busi­ness Cli­mate' con­fer­ence, he said Pak­istan and Iran was en­joy­ing good po­lit­i­cal and eco­nomic re­la­tions. The Ira­nian trade and busi­ness del­e­ga­tion was headed by Pres­i­dent Fed­er­a­tion of Ira­nian Cham­ber of Com­merce and In­dus­try, Mohsin Jalal Puri. He said the visit of Ira­nian Pres­i­dent Has­san Rouhani to Pak­istan has a strate­gic im­por­tance for the fu­ture re­la­tion­ship of both the coun­tries.

It would also help strength­en­ing and en­hanc­ing the bi­lat­eral trade and in­vest­ment re­la­tions of the two coun­tries as both sides shared com­mon his­tory and tra­di­tions, he added. High­light­ing the salient fea­ture of lo­cal econ­omy, he said that over­whelm­ing eco­nomic progress was wit­nessed dur­ing last two and half years as bud­get deficit came down from 8.2 per­cent to 4.3 per­cent be­sides re­mark­able in­crease in GDP growth of 4.4 per­cent and sig­nif­i­cant de­crease in in­fla­tion from 12 per­cent to 2 per­cent. The eco­nomic per­for­mance was also rec­og­nized by in­ter­na­tional credit rat­ing agen­cies and in­sti­tu­tions in­clud­ing Moodi, Stan­dard and Poors and JETRO, he added. The BoI Head in­formed the Ira­nian busi­ness­men that Pak­istan was blessed with nat­u­ral and skilled hu­man re­sources with sec­ond largest mid­dle class which was also of­fer­ing in­vest­ment and trade op­por­tu­ni­ties for for­eign in­vestors. Ear­lier, brief­ing the del­e­gates, Sec­re­tary BoI Azhar Ali Chaudhry said Pak­istan was com­mit­ted for re­gional trade in­te­gra­tion by of­fer­ing uni­form trade and in­vest­ment op­por­tu­ni­ties for lo­cal as well as for­eign in­vestors.